The Death of Marat is a painting by Jacques-Louis David of the murdered
French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat. It is one of the most famous
images of the Revolution. David was the leading French painter, as well as a
Montagnard and a member of the revolutionary Committee of General
Security. The painting shows the radical journalist lying dead in his bath on 13
July 1793 after his murder by Charlotte Corday. Painted in the months after
Marat's murder, it has been described by T. J. Clark as the first modernist
painting, for "the way it took the stuff of politics as its material, and did not
transmute it". The murder
Marat was one of the leaders of the Montagnards, the radical faction
ascendant in French politics during the Reign of Terror until the Thermidorian
Reaction. Charlotte Corday was a Girondin from a minor aristocratic
family and a political enemy of Marat who blamed him for the September
Massacre. She gained entrance to Marat's rooms with a note promising details of a
counter-revolutionary ring in Caen. Marat suffered from eczema that caused
him to spend time in his bathtub where he would bathe in oatmeal; he would
often work there. Corday fatally stabbed Marat, though she did not attempt to
flee. She was later tried and executed for the murder.
David's politics As well as being the leading French
painter of his generation, David was a prominent Montagnard, and a Jacobin,
aligned with Marat and Robespierre. A deputy of the Museum section at the
Convention, he voted for the death of the King, and served on the Committee of
General Security, where he actively participated in the sentencing and
imprisonment of many and eventually presided over the "section des
interrogatoires". He was also on the Committee of Public Instruction.
Style Marat's figure is idealized. For
example, the painting contains no sign of his skin problems. David, however,
drew other details from his visit to Marat's residence the day before the
assassination: the green rug, the papers, and the pen. David promised his
peers in the National Convention that he would later depict their murdered friend
invocatively as "écrivant pour le bonheur du peuple". The Death of Marat
is designed to commemorate a personable hero. Although the name Charlotte Corday
can be seen on the paper held in Marat's left hand, she herself is not visible.
Close inspection of this painting shows Marat at his last breath, when Corday
and many others were still nearby. Therefore, David intended to record more
than just the horror of martyrdom. In this sense, for realistic as it is in
its details, the painting, as a whole, from its start, is a methodical
construction focusing on the victim, a striking set up regarded today by
several critics as an "awful beautiful lie"— certainly not a photograph in the
forensic scientific sense and barely the simple image it may seem.
The Death of Marat has often been compared to Michelangelo's Pietà. Note
the elongated arm hanging down in both works. David admired Caravaggio's works,
especially Entombment of Christ, which mirrors The Death of Marat's drama and
light. David sought to transfer the sacred
qualities long associated with the monarchy and the Catholic Church to the
new French Republic. He painted Marat, martyr of the Revolution, in a style
reminiscent of a Christian martyr, with the face and body bathed in a soft,
glowing light. As Christian art had done from its beginning, David also played
with multileveled references to classical art. Suggestions that Paris
could compete with Rome as capital and mother city of the Arts and the idea of
forming a kind of new Roman Republic appealed to French Revolutionaries, who
often formed David's audience. Later history
Widely admired during the Terror whose leaders ordered several copies of the
original work, The Death of Marat slowly ceased to be 'frontpage history' after
Robespierre's overthrow and execution. At his request, it was returned to David
in 1795, himself being prosecuted for his involvement in the Terror as a
member of the Comité de Sureté Général. From 1795 to David's death, the painting
languished in obscurity. During David's exile in Belgium, it was hidden,
somewhere in France, by Antoine Gros, David's dearest pupil. In 1826, the
family tried to sell it, with no success at all. It was rediscovered by the
critics in the mid-nineteenth century, especially by Charles Baudelaire whose
famous comment in 1846 became the starting point of an increased interest
among artists and scholars. In the 20th century, the painting inspired several
painters, poets and writers. The original painting is currently
displayed at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, being there as a
result of a decision taken by the family to offer it, in 1886, to the city where
the painter had lived quietly and died in exile after the fall of Napoleon.
Some of the copies made by David's pupils survived, notably visible in the
museums of Dijon, Reims, and Versailles. The original letter, with bloodstains
and bath water marks still visible, has survived and is currently intact in the
ownership of Robert Lindsay, 29th Earl of Crawford.
Other artists have also depicted the death of Marat, sometimes long after the
facts, whose works refer or not to David's masterpiece. Among these later
works, the Charlotte Corday by Paul Jacques Aimé Baudry, painted in 1860,
during the Second Empire, when Marat's "dark legend" was widely spread among
educated people, depicts Charlotte Corday as a true heroine of France, a
model of virtue for the younger generations. The versions of Picasso and
Munch are less trying to refer to the original context in itself than to
confront modern issues with those of David, in terms of style.
There was also a spoof of this painting done that depicts, floating in the bath
with Marat, a small boat with a gun pointed at him. The letter he is writing
says, "Dear Hobbyland, that boat you sold me is defecti...." and then the
writing drops off in a squiggly line. Cultural references
In 1897, the Frenchman Georges Hatot directed a movie entitled La Mort de
Marat. This early silent film made for the Lumière Company is a brief
single-shot scene of the assassination of the revolutionary.
The composition influenced one of the scenes in Stanley Kubrick's 1975
adaptation of Barry Lyndon. The cover art of the 1980 album East by
Australian pub rock band Cold Chisel, was inspired by the painting.
Andrzej Wajda's 1983 film Danton includes several scenes in David's
atelier, including one showing the painting of Marat's portrait.
Derek Jarman's 1986 film Caravaggio imitates the painting in a scene where
the chronicler, head bound in a towel, slouches back in his tub, one arm
extended outside the tub. Vik Muniz recreated the Death of Marat
with waste from a massive landfill near Rio de Janeiro in his 2010 documentary
Waste Land. The picture is prominently featured on the DVD cover.
Steve Goodman re-created the painting for the cover of his 1977 album Say It
in Private. The painting was used as the album art
for American band Have a Nice Life's 2008 album Deathconsciousness.
Footnotes Bibliography
T J Clark, "Painting in the Year Two", in Representations, No. 47, Special
Issue: National Cultures before Nationalism, pp. 13–63.
Thibaudeau, M.A., Vie de David, Bruxelles
Delécluze, E., Louis David, son école et son temps, Paris, re-edition Macula –
First-hand testimony by a pupil of David David, J.L., Le peintre Louis David
1748–1825. Souvenirs & Documents inédits par J.L. David son Petit-Fils, ed.
Victor Havard, Paris Holma, Klaus, David. Son évolution, son
style, Paris Adhé mar Jean, David. Naissance du génie
d'un peintre, ed. Raoul Solar, Paris Bowman, F.P., 'Le culte de Marat, figure
de Jésus', Le Christ romantique, ed. Droz, Genève,pp. 62 sq.
Wildenstein, Daniel et Guy, Documents complémentaires au catalogue de l’oeuvre
de Louis David, Paris, Fondation Wildenstein – fondamental source to
track all influences constituting David's visual culture
Starobinski, Jean, 1789, les emblèmes de la raison, ed. Flammarion, Paris
Schnapper, Antoine, David témoin de son temps, ed. Office du Livre, Fribourg
Kruft, H.-W., "An antique model for David's Marat" in The Burlington
Magazine CXXV, 967, pp. 605–607; CXXVI, 973
Traeger, Jorg, Der Tod des Marat: Revolution des menschenbildes, ed.
Prestel, München Thévoz, Michel, Le théâtre du crime.
Essai sur la peinture de David, éd. de Minuit, Paris
Guilhaumou, J., La mort de Marat, ed. Complexe, Bruxelles
Mortier, R., 'La mort de Marat dans l'imagerie révolutionnaire', Bulletin de
la Classe des Beaux-Arts, Académie Royale de Belgique, 6ème série, tome I,
10–11, pp. 131–144 Simon, Robert, "David’s Martyr-Portrait
of Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau and the conundrums of Revolutionary
Representation" in Art History, vol.14, n°4, pp. 459–487
Sérullaz, Arlette, Inventaire général des dessins. Ecole française. Dessins de
Jacques-Louis David 1748–1825, Paris David contre David, actes du colloque au
Louvre du 6–10 décembre 1989, éd. R. Michel, Paris [M. Bleyl, "Marat : du
portrait à la peinture d'histoire"] Malvone, Laura, "L'Évènement politique
en peinture. A propos du Marat de David" in Mélanges de l'Ecole française de
Rome. Italie et Méditerranée, n° 106, 1 Pacco, M., De Vouet à David. Peintures
françaises du Musée d'Art Ancien, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, ed. MRBAB, Bruxelles
Hofmann, Werner, Une époque en rupture 1750–1830, Gallimard, Paris
Crow, T., Emulation. Making artists for Revolutionary France, ed. Yale
University Press, New Haven London Monneret, Sophie, David et le
néoclassicisme, ed. Terrail, Paris Robespierre, edited by Colin Haydon &
William Doyle, Cambridge Lajer-Burcharth, E., Necklines. The art
of Jacques-Louis David after the Terror, ed. Yale University Press, New Haven
London Lee, S., David, ed. Phaidon, London; *
Aston, Nigel, Religion and Revolution in France, 1780–1804, McMillan, London
Jacques-Louis David’s Marat, edited by William Vaughan & Helen Weston,
Cambridge Rosenberg, Pierre & Louis-Antoine Prat,
Jacques-Louis David 1748–1825. Catalogue raisonné des dessins, 2 volumes, éd.
Leonardo Arte, Milan Idem, Peronnet, Benjamin, « Un album
inédit de David », Revue de l’Art, n°142, pp. 45–83
Coquard, Olivier, "Marat assassiné. Reconstitution abusive" in Historia
Mensuel, n°691 Vanden Berghe, Marc & Ioana Plesca,
Nouvelles perspectives sur la Mort de Marat: entre modèle jésuite et
références mythologiques, Bruxelles / New perspectives for David's Death of
Marat, Brussels, available at the KBR, Brussels.
Idem, Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau sur son lit de mort par Jacques Louis-David
: saint Sébastien révolutionnaire, miroir multiréférencé de Rome, Brussels,
available at the KBR, Brussels. Sainte-Fare Garnot, N., Jacques-Louis
David 1748–1825, Paris, Ed. Chaudun Johnson, Dorothy, Jacques-Louis David:
New Perspectives, University of Delaware Press
Guilhaumou, Jacques, La mort de Marat revolution-francaise.net
Plume de Marat – Plumes sur Marat, pour une bibliographie générale,, Editions
Pôle Nord, Bruxelles Angelitti, Silvana, "La Morte di Marat e
la Pietà di Michelangelo" in La propaganda nella storia, sl,,
e-torricelli.it Pesce, Luigi, Marat assassinato : il
tema del braccio della morte : realismo caravagesco e ars moriendi in David,
s.ed., sl, steadyoffload.com "A cinema of loneliness" by Robert
Kolker, Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick